To avoid the aforementioned failure mode of silent approval and loud dissent, let me say that I appreciate this post and this series. I'm trying to update my priors about how many women (in the rationalist cluster) have experienced outright horrific abuse of several sorts, and how many more have had to worry about it; it's obvious in retrospect that I wouldn't have been exposed to these kinds of stories as I was growing up even if they happened around me. That really bears on the question of what policies are best overall, though I'll have to think through all the implications.
I agree, but connotationally I also want to note that...
I wouldn't have been exposed to these kinds of stories as I was growing up even if they happened around me
...this part is completely gender-neutral.
I noticed that in many descriptions of violence against women, it is emphasised that given person is a normal male. I feel this requires deeper analysis than just saying "I agree" or "I disagree and I feel offended". Different people may translate these words completely differently, so let's think about which translations are correct and which are not.
To make this discussion shorter, let's ignore the part that also women can be violent, only let's only focus on what "normal male" means in this context. Here are a few possible translations. Actually, I just pick two extreme ones, and anyone is welcome to add other options (because I don't want to generate too many strawpersons).
A man can be abusive towards his wife/girlfriend/random girl even if he is not a psychopath, even if he is very nice and polite towards all his friends and strangers, if he is a good student, productive in his job, or a Nobel price winner. Towards a specific person in a specific relationship, his behavior may be completely different.
Deep in their hearts, all men desire to torture women. Some of them are just too afraid of legal consequences.
Let's say that I agree with the ...
A man can be abusive towards his wife/girlfriend/random girl even if he is not a psychopath, even if he is very nice and polite towards all his friends and strangers, if he is a good student, productive in his job, or a Nobel price winner. Towards a specific person in a specific relationship, his behavior may be completely different.
A variation:
There's a halfway point between those extremes:
Many men do what is socially acceptable, and avoid what is social unacceptable. But their reading of what is socially acceptable allows them to do abusive things.
REGARDLESS of whether those men are reading the social norms correctly, there are effective interventions to (change / make more explicit) the norms those men are trying to follow. For example, the Don't Be that Guy campaign in Ottawa, Canada. Alas, I can't find any data that shows effectiveness. But if data showed actual incidence was not decreased by this type of campaign, that would count heavily against my current model of the world - keeping in mind that there are strong reasons to be unsure of the connection between reported incidents and actual incidents.
It is significantly more socially acceptable for a woman to hit a man than the reverse. It is more socially acceptable for a woman to sexually assault a man.
It's more socially acceptable for a woman to suggest a man should be castrated, emasculated (a word which refers to the wholesale removal of a man's genitals, incidentally, as opposed to castration, which refers only to removal of the testicles), anally raped, or than any analogous reversal.
These things happen regularly without comment or outrage in our society.
I'm curious to know what exactly your model of the world is.
Wedding Crashers. Yes Man. 40 Days and Nights (although in that case, there was a bit of popular backlash).
I'm not going to go through cases for the first thing you quoted.
But it's not limited to speech. If a woman hits me, most witnesses will assume I deserved it; I did or said something they didn't see. If I hit a woman - well. Men who have called 911 after being assaulted by their wives or girlfriends frequently find -themselves- locked up.
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker is an interesting example. He starts by explaining that he became fascinated by finding out how to predict threat levels because his mother was extremely violent. The rest of the book assumes that an aggressor will be male.
The Emotional Terrorist and the Violence-Prone by Erin Pizzey is her account of starting one of the first domestic violence shelters in the British Isles, and being surprised to find that a bit over half the women were habitually violent themselves. I've heard confirming information from at least one other source. This doesn't mean you should assume that any women who reports violence in her marriage is partly at fault-- note that the odds are close to even.
I think women who are domestically violent against men are a serious problem, and it's going to take a lot of men speaking up (something which is quite difficult, and not just because of feminists) to get any sort of a solution.
I didn't imply you find it acceptable. The question was, if you think social acceptability is predictive of behavior, do you expect to see more violence against men than women - that is, should you expect that violence by women against men is a larger social problem, given that it is more socially acceptable?
There's a perfectly good (IMO) non-cultural reason for that, namely that the average man is physically bigger than the average woman and therefore he's more likely to seriously harm her by hitting her than the other way round.
On the other hand, some women are bigger and/or stronger than some men. Size is hardly a hidden factor. Why not use that instead of a surrogate?
From the "How to Change Your Mind" sequence: Lonely dissent doesn't feel like going to school dressed in black. It feels like going to school wearing a clown suit. (In other words, "leaving the pack" vs. "joining the rebellion")
What is this "social acceptance" you speak of?
The first rule of human club is you don't explicitly discuss the rules of human club.
Is it defined by some authority?
There is no authority with the power to define, despite the best efforts of Dear Abby and others.
How is it measured?
With great difficulty and much controversy.
Why is this a particularly important ambiguity for people speaking to you to make explicit, compared to the thousands of other ambiguities inherent in the use of natural language?
There are thousands of ambiguities in natural language, but most of them don't have a connotation that I am a criminal in disguise. If it becomes accepted uncritically, some day it could have negative consequences for me.
How would e.g. a black person feel about a habit of inserting sentences like "this criminal was a normal black person" whenever a crime done by a black person is dicussed?
But also women have a selfish reason to care. Imagine that as a heterosexual woman you want to have a partner, and you want to minimize the risk of being abused. Changing the society and the legal system helps, but that is a very slow process. You also want to reduce the chance that you specifically will choose an abusive partner. So here is a specific man, and he looks attractive.. how can you estimate the probability of future abuse? Is there any evidence available?
Believing that "all men are abusers (when given a chance)" suggests that no evidence exists; there are no red flags you could detect t...
understanding the abused's staying in the relationship is part of that puzzle
Could believing that "all men are abusers" contribute to staying with the one specific abuser? Such model provides only the choice between an abusive man or no man... where a different model would also provide an option of finding a non-abusive man.
(A data point about a slightly different situation: I knew a woman who believed that all men are alcoholics; the only difference is that some are honest about it and get drunk in public, the remaining ones are in denial and get drunk at home; and from these only two options, the former ones are more honest and more social. No surprise that all her partners were alcoholics. She complained about that, but instead about her bad choices, she complained about the bad male nature. Attempts by other women to convince her otherwise only led to responses like: "You are so naive to believe that. Just wait until you know your darling better and you will find out that he is an alcoholic too.")
Could believing that "all men are abusers" contribute to staying with the one specific abuser?
Sorta, yes, no. Cart before the horse. I think some women who stay with abusers may rationalize it by believing that all men are abusers. Mostly rationality is used for "understanding" what is happening, not generally to prompt fundamental changes. When I was drinking I had a very warped idea of how much other people drank, I thought I was drinking a little more than them. When I stopped drinking, and especially when I stopped feeling driven to drink, I realized that a tremendous fraction of my world was barely drinking at all, and that even among drinkers, most of them were sober enough to read the bill at the end of the night (which I generally wasn't on Fridays).
The evidence about other people's drinking was always there, I discounted gigantically its difference from what I was doing. In most of modern life, the evidence for other men treating other women differently is there, the question is why would one woman in an almost identical information rich environment as another women never give a guy who once raises his voice at her a second chance, while another stays through multiple mate-induced hospital visits?
An older woman is abusing her position of authority to violently take out her frustrations on a young male she has authority over - and that's patriarchy? Really? Reverse the situation, and that might be "patriarchy." Or it could just be a messed up person. The position the author takes in that post trivializes women; they can't help it, they're not responsible for their actions, because Patriarchy. Well, "misogyny" is right. It just applies to the person writing that post.
And the porn comment, as well. Men need to be fixed, because their sexuality isn't desirable or acceptable.
And I'm sure I'm "mansplaining," a sexist term which boils down to trivializing male perspective. Regardless of whatever bad things it has been used to describe, I've seen it far more often used to attack reasonable discourse. When you're discussing things rationally you can say exactly what is wrong with a statement; you don't need terms like "mansplaining."
Also, a minor comment in regards to Author A - please don't trivialize women who do prefer the contributing, doting role. They aren't doing it wrong, they're doing it different, and they experience no sma...
Or, to put it another way - read this post with the genders reversed and few would hesitate to call the result misogynistic. This is my personal yardstick for discussing gender issues; swap the genders and see how it reads.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (The Red Lily; Anatole France)
Which is to say, insisting on treating two people identically when they are embedded in a system of inequality sometimes leads us to absurd conclusions.
You don't get a pass on your own biases merely because you oppose somebody else's. You especially don't get a pass on your own biases when you're using them as the basis to assert somebody else's.
To be absolutely clear here - you're saying actual, overt sexism is acceptable, as long as it's women doing it to men?
I'm not sure if I'm saying that, since I'm never quite sure what people mean by "sexism", let alone "actual, overt sexism".
But I am saying that in a system that differentially benefits group X over group Y, I consider it much more acceptable for an individual to treat X and Y differently in a way that differentially benefits Y than in a way that further differentially benefits X. If that's actual, overt sexism in case where (X,Y)=(men, women), then yes, I'm saying actual, overt sexism is sometimes acceptable as long as it's being done to men. (The gender of the person doing it is irrelevant.)
If that's itself pretty damn sexist, I'm OK with that. My purpose here is not to avoid nasty sounding labels, but to reduce the (net) differential in distribution of social benefits (among other purposes). So if I have a choice between "being sexist" while reducing that differential and "not being sexist" while increasing it (all else being equal), I choose to reduce that differential. Labels don't matter as much as the properties of t...
Well alright, as long as you're consistent ;)
Personally, I would say most "sexism" is less taking from Y and giving to X and more just harming Y, which benefits X only through weaker competition. I suppose if you view the battle of the sexes to be a zero-sum game, that yardstick doesn't make much sense. However, if you thing misogyny and misandry hurt everyone, it does. Looks like there was an inarticulated assumption in OrphanWilde's post, I guess.
Ah! I understand what you're saying, now. Thanks for clarifying further.
Yes, you're right, if the only thing I wanted to do was reduce the net inequality, I could achieve my goals most readily by harming X until it was just as bad off as Y (which would be a negative-sum game), and that would be equivalent to benefiting Y. Or I could use some combination of benefit-to-Y and harm-to-X.
And no, reducing the net inequality is not the only thing I want to do, for precisely this reason.
But it is a thing I want to do. And as a consequence, I don't treat actions that benefit Y the same way as actions that improve X's situation, and I don't treat actions that harm Y the same way as actions that harm X.
Your tone in this comment is hostile and defensive. This suggests to me that you've had discussions with feminists who were very aggressive and possibly unreasonable. If true, I'm sorry that you had to experience that. But please try to keep in mind that not all women/feminists are like that, and that it's possible to recognize misogyny as a phenomenon without blaming each individual man for all of the the gender inequalities in our society.
And the porn comment, as well. Men need to be fixed, because their sexuality isn't desirable or acceptable.
I also think the porn comment wasn't great, though I think you read a bit more into it than I did. As someone who would describe themselves both as "feminist" and "sex-positive," it bothers me when people associate "watches porn" with "psychopath." This story doesn't seem too relevant to an overarching narrative of misogyny; it's just a tale of woe that could have happened to anyone unlucky/foolish enough to marry an insane person.
An older woman is abusing her position of authority to violently take out her frustrations on a young male she has authority over - and that's patriarchy?
I agree that that wasn't substantively about patriarchy. The comment about the older woman having to do all of the household work, however, was.
Your tone in this comment is hostile and defensive. This suggests to me that you've had discussions with feminists who were very aggressive and possibly unreasonable. If true, I'm sorry that you had to experience that. But please try to keep in mind that not all women/feminists are like that, and that it's possible to recognize misogyny as a phenomenon without blaming each individual man for all of the the gender inequalities in our society.
Hostile, yes. I reserve my hostility towards those who are aggressive and unreasonable, however. For an example of a self-described feminist who I like, Quizzical Pussy. (Yeah, yeah, I have black friends.) But I wasn't actually angry about the misandry, although I noted it, and criticized the hypocrisy. I was angry at the -misogyny-.
See:
"this is in part due to women using men’s explanations, with men being less challenging than apologetic" "the victim’s biological mother (abuser’s wife) and paternal grandmother accepted the abuser's rationalizations" (and the bit about the grandmother)
The persistent theme in the post is denying the women involved any agency. There's patriarchy, they're just victims, helpless. They'r...
In general I disagree with your remarks, but the only one I feel we can make progress on is probably:
And I'm sure I'm "mansplaining," a sexist term which boils down to trivializing male perspective.
You know, I'm pretty sure it's sometimes used that way, but I'm also pretty sure that there's an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
Why do I say this? First, I've seen examples of it among my coworkers. Second, I've experienced first-hand the equivalent phenomena where straight people try to comment on what they think my situation is like as if they know what's going on, and end up being completely wrong.
Now I'd agree that the term has become inflated sometimes to mean any negative male reaction to a female narrative, but that's just an argument for deflating it, not an argument that the inflation is universal, and that legitimate examples of illegitimate negative male reactions don't exist.
I'm also pretty sure that there's an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
People certainly explain things in a tone of certitude from positions of ignorance, like, all the time. And I find it plausible that this is more common among men since exuding competence and knowledge tends to be more important for male status and men seem to be more concerned with "winning" arguments than women. But I don't see any good reason to make the phenomenon about the relationship between genders. I'm male. My male friends "mansplain" to me all the time. I "mansplain" to them. But most of my friends are highly intelligent, opinionated women-- and all of them "mansplain" to me too.
It's a bad epistemic habit and often disrespectful. It's talking to seem impressive instead of talking to learn or share. It's important for rationalists to avoid it. But I think it's really absurd to suggest it is something only men do-- to the point of referring to it as "mansplaining". Especially since the issues on which -in my experience- women most often talk with certitude from a place of ignorance is gender politics, particularly regarding the experiences and motivations of men.
I detest the term "mansplaining" because it conflates gender issues and errors. It's better to point out actual problems with what's being said.
As a side issue, though, when I was trying to find out whether mansplaining might refer to something real, I did notice on NPR shows that the people who called in and took up more time by using obvious statements to lay groundwork for their questions were typically men.
Personally, I detest it because it exists in order to avoid having to point out actual problems with what's being said. It's a form of ad hominem, really.
In addition, I think the use of "mansplaining" as a signal that just about anything a man can say will be unwelcome. It's a way of eliminating relevant input, and is more likely to silence men who care about behaving well than those who don't care.
I think badly of anyone who uses the word as a straightforward description.
But I think it's really absurd to suggest it is something only men do-- to the point of referring to it as "mansplaining".
Sure. Similarly, I think it's absurd to suggest that complaining loudly and aggressively is something only women do, to the point of referring to it as "bitching."
And yet, terms like this are common in our linguistic environment.
Of course, that's not in and of itself a good reason to accept them. My culture no longer uses "Jew someone down" as a way of describing sharp negotiation practices, for example, because it's seen as expressing and encouraging a view of Jews that we collectively no longer endorse. (Though we still use "gyp"in similar ways.) Many communities reject "bitching" for similar reasons as applied to women. And we could certainly reject "mansplaining" as harmful to men.
But it's also worth asking where our energies are most usefully spent.
Perhaps we could use a new word "blackstealing" for describing when a black person steals something from a white person.
I assure you that I am fully aware that sometimes also black people steal from black people, or white people from black people, or white people from white people, etc... but that is irrelevant here, because those acts just don't have the same qualia. Blackstealing is a specific phenomenon and deserves its name in our discourse.
(To avoid misunderstanding, this comment is not meant seriously, it just serves to illustrate the offensiveness of "mansplaining". I just had to use an analogy, because offending men is not considered an offense.)
(More meta: This comment is probably just another example of mansplaining. It would have to be written by a woman to deserve a serious thought.)
My Yvain-inspired view of this is that there are several different levels of power, and social justice dogma tends to conflate them. This sometimes results in things like trying to solve things like institutional, situational poverty using discourse, and in pushes that will leave one side without self-respect and the other side no better off materially than before.
You know, I'm pretty sure it's sometimes used that way, but I'm also pretty sure that there's an actual category of discourse that involves men explaining things in a tone of certitude but from a position of ignorance.
This is part of humanity. It's not unique to men.
I've experienced first-hand the equivalent phenomena where straight people try to comment on what they think my situation is like as if they know what's going on, and end up being completely wrong.
Being bisexual, I know exactly what you're referring to. However, again, the typical mind fallacy is not unique to straight people, or men.
Now I'd agree that the term has become inflated sometimes to mean any negative male reaction to a female narrative, but that's just an argument for deflating it, not an argument that the inflation is universal, and that legitimate examples of illegitimate negative male reactions don't exist.
The issue with this argument is that "male" doesn't belong in your last sentence. Illegitimate arguments exist. Point out why they're illegitimate. If you can't, you have no business responding to the argument.
"Mansplaining" is sexist. It's kind of like the term "hysterical." Cognitive dissonance is encountering somebody who regularly uses the term "mansplaining" complaining about the sexist origins of the word "hysterical."
At least some feminists today prefer the term "splaining", precisely because the behavior isn't unique to men.
It's better (although it still fails to reject an argument on its merits, or lack thereof), but I'm not sure the term can really be rehabilitated in such a manner. First, the connotation has already been established among too many people, and it's bad, and second, most of those I've encountered who use that term write it as `splaining.
It comes across less as addressing a problem and more as hiding it. It becomes a code word - whitewashing the explicit sexism, but maintaining the implicit.
I haven't accused you of misandry. (Seriously, this should be an "I am confused" moment. Please stop trying to fit what I am saying into a predefined narrative.)
What I've accused you of, effectively, is supporting a dominance hierarchy that dehumanizes me, that makes my experiences less significant. More than one guy has said in this post that he finds the term "mansplaining" to be offensive, and a strong signal that his gender will be held against him, and anything he says will be ignored. Why do you persist in defending it? Because you insist on a dominance hierarchy that makes their experiences matter less than... what exactly? The ability of feminists to be offensive? Because you think being in a dominant class confers an immunity against hurt?
The dominance hierarchy didn't protect me from an emotionally abusive misandrist. It didn't protect me from the college professor who routinely flunked or kicked out every male student who ever made the mistake of taking a class with her without asking around about her reputation first. It doesn't protect me from rape or violence. It does not, in fact, confer any protections at all. Instead, it strips them a...
I'm copying this comment from the PUA discussion because that post is being downvoted to oblivion and I don't want this comment to get lost.
PUA and Last Minute Resistance: I have no idea why PUA gets its bad reputation from negging when something like this was easy to find "Distract her thoughts with banter: It’s very simple to distract her logical mind… just don’t answer questions, deflect them. If she says “Where do you live” say “Oh, it’s like 5 minutes away”. Keep the conversation flowing and she will be fine."
This one has an explicit "no means no", but a strong recommendation to distract her from anything short of an emphatic no.
This one is interesting-- it puts seduction in the category of salesmanship, and has some clue about why being manipulated isn't fun.
I recommend Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser to give some idea of the range of thought and technique in the PUA communities. Chapter 3 covers PUA and Last Minute Resistance, and is an excellent description of how to not pressure people into behavior they don't want. Key points: withdrawing from connection counts as pressure. If you respect the person and they need time to process what's going on, ...
The LMR stuff is pretty ethically backward.
It also strikes me as really counterproductive for the stated PUA goals of social success and having lots of fun. I guess there are those who just want to maximize the number of women they can say they've slept with. But to me it just sounds like a recipe for rushed, communication free, one-time-only sex-- which is to say really bad sex. Not to mention it reeks of the ego-obsessed neediness PUAs generally suggest rejecting.
I mean, if you are a normally attractive, or maybe even a slightly lower-than-average attractive man, and you go to clubs where sexually available women go searching for mates, and you approach a lot of these women, then provided you don't do something terribly stupid or awkward, you have good chances of getting laid.
Above-average attractiveness, 12 years of college parties, 2 years in a fraternity, attended hundreds of parties, bars, and clubs, threw about a dozen parties myself, spoke to thousands of women. Did not hook up once in that manner, even with women who obviously wanted to hook up with me. There is some secret courting dance the male must do at that point, and I don't know it.
I once threw a party and invited only random strangers, where every single person who attended hooked up with another stranger, except me and my co-host. We left 2 dozen strangers silently locking jaws in pairs in our apartment and went to another party.
After that, took up bodybuilding for a couple of years, and in the second year found it easy to pick up women without ever going to those places.
if you are a normally attractive, or maybe even a slightly lower-than-average attractive man, and you go to clubs where sexually available women go searching for mates, and you approach a lot of these women, then provided you don't do something terribly stupid or awkward,
Among the kind of people who read Less Wrong, that's bigger “if” than you might realize.
Now I don't know what exactly typical readers of PUA material are like, but few of the people in the audience of the RSD seminars I've watched looked like your average jock either. So, I'm under the impression that PUAs are mostly just systematizing stuff that more neurotypical guys just implement in System 1, the way that if you've just started learning a language it can be useful to explicitly study grammatical features that native speakers don't usually consciously think about.
TL;DR: Please isolate and clarify what specific experiences and actions you are talking about when you say "rape", "assault", etc. in the same manner that you would want others to if you were talking about taxes and people kept saying "theft" and "slavery". Thank you.
Disclaimer: Not intended directly as a critique or counterargument to the submissions.
Other disclaimer: If reading descriptions of violent sexual assault can trigger traumatic experiences, don't read this.
Nitpick:
Honestly, when things like "my ex raped and assaulted and abused me" and "forced sex on me" come up, I have no idea what the person is referring to. In context, the person saying this might have a very specific emotion / subjective experience in mind when they say this. However, without direct access to this experience, I'm left hanging...
Does this mean the partner just insisted verbally a lot, saying "it'll be fun", "come on, don't be like that" (with negative connotation), maybe some psychological pressure, and then the victim ended up agreeing to have sex because, who knows, they might enjoy it and it'll ple...
a male punched a female down to the floor or otherwise used physical violence until the female had no more ability to defend herself, and then the guy ripped apart clothing and forcefully inserted himself, fending off or forcefully countering (perhaps by preemptive hitting to weaken her) her attempts at defense (if any by that point) while just painfully (for her) enjoying his forced sex, control, cruelty, dominance and the humiliation / despair of his victim?
One major problem with communication on this issue is that the quoted text is not how sexual assault tends to appear in the real world. If that's the definition of rape or sexual assault, then what happened in Steubenville wasn't rape or sexual assault. (Just to be clear, I think what happened in Steubenville deserves to be criminalized as sexual assault).
Here is one analysis of the sociological research on rape. In brief, in a survey of ~ 1800 college students, 6% said yes to questions like:
Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances (e.g., removing their clothes)?
63% of the folks who sa...
I feel like I'm being read rather uncharitably.
One major problem with communication on this issue is that the quoted text is not how sexual assault tends to appear in the real world. If that's the definition of rape or sexual assault, then what happened in Steubenville wasn't rape or sexual assault. (Just to be clear, I think what happened in Steubenville deserves to be criminalized as sexual assault).
This is, in fact, one of my points. People sometimes gloss over the differences between various points in the spectrum, and speak with connotations as if all forms of rape were exactly as horrible and utility-destroying as the one I described. My nitpick is that this should be avoided. My desire is that people pay more attention to avoiding this error.
In brief, in a survey of ~ 1800 college students, 6% said yes to questions like:
I'm surprised, and not in that direction. 6% seems unusually low if taken at face value. Adjusting for the fact that this is a self-reporting survey, sure, that matches my priors (even though that still feels a bit low, but might be a memory / bias thing). The military stats also somewhat fit within the bounds of my priors, though I'll update a bit ...
I feel like I'm being read rather uncharitably.
I didn't downvote. Sexual assault certainly is a spectrum. But your two examples are roughly like saying:
There are two likely possibilities. First, DARE is right about everything. Second, drug abuse is not a serious problem in this country.
Suppose I have a strong prior that one doesn't think the second prong is true. Then I should adjust my estimate that one is very confused about drug abuse significantly upward (because DARE is nonsense).
The interventions likely to reduce stranger rape are unlikely to effect skeevy rape. Since skeevy rape is overwhelmingly more common (the linked research says that no one described using force on a stranger), that's where we should focus the discussion.
Isn't the inverse there: "She attended a party, planning to get drunk and sleep with some guy who she wouldn't sleep with if she was sober"?
Care to explain why [the Steubenville perpetrators should be convicted criminals]?
Their actions weren't consensual among all the participants. The places in law or morality where non-consensual acts between private citizens are allowed are few and far between.
I'm aware of your hypothetical about high caste people wanting a huge physical space from lower caste people. That's not about consent - that's about what acts society requires consent to perform. Physical contact is a pretty clear line.
Whether it was "rape" depends on vagaries in the definitions in Ohio's criminal code. That's why I'm talking about the category of sexual assault.
Is "contempt" a better word for the attitudes and actions associated with "misogyny" than "hate"? "Hate" seems too active, conscious, and intention-based - it's a strong feeling and when you feel it, you know it.
A:
The article about Larsson also has a bit about his partner's contributions not being credited to her, which seems to be typical of man-woman partnerships. Besides seeing it in other stories, I've experienced it in my own life.
Beware of hasty generalization. The fact that you have been in an abusive relationship and you've read similar stories doesn't imply that these relationships are typical.
You might think my ex was a sociopath, but no -- he's a normal male, working as a university professor.
The intersection between the set of sociopaths and the set of university professors is not necessarily empty. However, claiming that this behavior is normal among males is outright sexist defamation. It's like, after sharing a story of being robbed by a black person you said: "You might think my robber was an antisocial person, but no -- they are a normal black person"
B:
I'm not sure what you describe as a body/mind dichotomy really makes sense or is the proper way of describing your experiences. What you describe seems to be known as egodystonicity, which is a quite common phenomenon to a certain extent, but can potentially become pathological.
...She has come to regret wh
The intersection between the set of sociopaths and the set of university professors is not necessarily empty. However, claiming that this behavior is normal among males is outright sexist defamation. It's like, after sharing a story of being robbed by a black person you said: "You might think my robber was an antisocial person, but no -- they are a normal black person"
Over 20% of women in the U.S. experience domestic violence. The incidence of sociopathy is at or below 5% so it's more likely that an abusive male in a relationship is not a sociopath. In India it actually is the "normal male" who is abusive, with the domestic violence rate against women at 50%, although I didn't see any analysis of whether it is a flat 50% of head-of-household males engaged in violence or a higher level of violence perpetrated by a few male family members in extended families.
Over 20% of women in the U.S. experience domestic violence. The incidence of sociopathy is at or below 5% so it's more likely that an abusive male in a relationship is not a sociopath.
That isn't logically valid. It's possible for a single person to abuse more than one woman. Therefore, the percentage of abusers in the population is likely lower than the percentage of abused. I don't know how much lower that is, but "less than 10%" is entirely plausible.
I'd argue that being a repeat offender is, for any crime and especially those with low conviction rates, more likely than being a repeat victim, by simple logic of "an offender chooses, a victim does not." You are right, though, in that I should have mentioned the possibility.
Good catch. The Harvard rape study (Lisak & Miller 2002) claims 63%, which my brain had apparently rounded up to "almost all". Sigh. Silly brain.
The intersection between the set of sociopaths and the set of university professors is not necessarily empty. However, claiming that this behavior is normal among males is outright sexist defamation. It's like, after sharing a story of being robbed by a black person you said: "You might think my robber was an antisocial person, but no -- they are a normal black person"
I also felt while reading this that my sex as a group was being defamed, but while I doubt that the author has the evidence to conclude that such behavior is truly typical of males in general, I also have to be skeptical that my own experiences are sufficient evidence to suppose that such behavior is atypical. Our own social circles tend to be very heavily filtered compared to the overall population, and just because the behavior the author wrote about describes few of the guys I've associated with, doesn't mean it's not normal.
I agree that we don't have evidence that his behavior is typical of men, but I find it plausible that a moderately high proportion of men and women have a script about relationships which makes it easy to maintain such behavior for quite a while without either partner being explicitly aware that it's abusive.
According to wikipedia, HLN used to be the Headline News part of CNN. So it is supposed to be real news.
But looking at its home page shows that V_V is probably right that there is a lot of sensationalizing going on - P(sensationalizing | Nancy Grace is involved) is essentially the definition of (1 - epsilon).
General note: let's not do that thing where we don't like an argument someone is presenting and so we fail to update on the evidence they present in favor of it.
Beware lest you abuse the notion of evidence-filtering as a Fully General Counterargument to exclude all evidence you don't like: "That argument was filtered, therefore I can ignore it." If you're ticked off by a contrary argument, then you are familiar with the case, and care enough to take sides. You probably already know your own side's strongest arguments. You have no reason to infer, from a contrary argument, the existence of new favorable signs and portents which you have not yet seen. So you are left with the uncomfortable facts themselves; a blue stamp on box B is still evidence.
— EY, "What Evidence Filtered Evidence?"
Also, we should distinguish between experiential evidence that a person offers based on their own experience, and (what we might call) hermeneutic evidence that may depend on a particular selective evaluation of published records. The sort of "evidence" that conspiracy-theorists (Holocaust-deniers; 9/11-truthers, birthers, etc.) have to offer is usually of the latter kind. In the present case, we are dealing with people's reports of their own experiences; even if we do not agree with the sociopolitical conclusions they draw from their experiences, this is not reason for us to become denialists about their experiences themselves.
Mostly irrelevant question: I found it curious that both A and B used the word "body" in places where I would have expected "self" or "mind" or "person":
Forcing or planning a body to serve just one body (even one's own body) will involve abuse.
While I’d like to think that’s not true, since my body’s tendency for as far back as I can remember has been to challenge wrong or unnecessary confabulations (I have to remind my body to be positively reinforcing of good actions)
Out of curiosity, daenerys, was this a coincidence or an artifact of editing?
After re-reading, I've been thinking these might be the same submitter myself, but having blinded myself to keep people's anonymity, I have no way of finding out myself. There had also been a similar spelling/grammar thing I had corrected in both these entries.
The most likely explanation would be if this was one submission that had a separation (like a row of asteriks) that made me end up processing it as two differing submissions when I was moving them all around into similar themes.
If you are the author(s) of this submission, and you don't mind me knowing, please PM me with whether or not this was one submission or two.
ETA: I have updated the OP to include a note that the two submissions may actually be one that I accidentally split in two (or might not be).
Both respondents give many examples of people being treated very badly/treating others very badly, but it's not clear what this has to do with misogyny. Just because you're looking for a pattern and see a bunch of examples that fit the pattern doesn't mean the pattern had any causal influence. Yes, in these cases they were men being mean to women (except with the grandmother beating up the brother). But if we were on the lookout for men being abusive to other men we'd also have many examples (rather more, according to my copy of Male Violence, ed. John Archer, 2001). Even if men being mean to women say misogynistic things, this doesn't show they're doing those actions because they are misogynistic, rather than just matching their rhetoric post hoc to their actions.
I gave my ex much input and feedback for his works, but others will never know. Meanwhile, he trivialized and hindered my work. He recently admitted to purposely discouraging me from going to college or doing well while I was there. I suspected as much, like when he guilt-tripped me the morning I had to cram for an AP exam in high school, BSing that my not celebrating his birthday with him meant that I didn't love him. This was when he was in grad school -- he knew what he was doing. He wanted to keep me for himself, and often said so. That thinking--a woman serving one men--was a justification for him to rape, physically assault, psychologically manipulate, and limit me (such as when or what I was allowed to write).
It looks like A went through some significant physical and emotional abuse early and often, probably left with a PTSD or other emotional scars. I wonder how common this is, vs a more subtle version, like the academic workplace discrimination stats linked in the OP.
Due to how our bodies work, a person tends to not respect a partner who is focused on pleasing just that person.
Bodies? Minds? I don't understand what the submitter means here. If this is about s...
almost all men watch porn, though few compulsively, and the tastes vary wildly.
Many women (more than half according to some statistics) also do it.
There are necessary gradients.
I don't think my then-girlfriend waking me up with oral sex - that's sex without consent, incidentally, and she and I had a very serious conversation about that afterwards, and set some boundaries for implicit consent for future use - is the same kind of act as what is commonly thought of as rape. I certainly don't think the legal punishments should be the same.
my smart-ass guess for how many women experience discrimination some time in their life would be closer to 100%.
My smart-ass guess for how many humans experience discrimination some time in their life would be closer to 100%.
Sure, but there's experiencing discrimination for any of 1,000 reasons, and there's experiencing discrimination because of your gender.
I'm a male and I had an emotionally abusive father. The abuse I received was rarely, if ever, related to me being a boy, while my older sister was regularly insulted as a girl. For example, getting called gendered insults aka dad screaming repeatedly "you fucking whore!" to his 12 year old daughter in the middle of a crowded street. I didn't have an gendered equivalent.
Were we both abused? Sure. Was my sister's abuse worse? Eh, I don't see that as a worthwhile question. Did her abuse negatively affect her view of herself as a woman more that mine negatively affected my view of myself as a man? Absolutely.
The abuse I received was rarely, if ever, related to me being a boy,
How do you know that? The expectations he had for you had nothing to do with being a boy? Did he give all the same abuse to your sister? He never called you wimp, faggot, queer, etc.?
After listening to a little men's rights talk, there really is a lot of discrimination against men that is entirely approved of by society, and not recognized at all. "It's not because they are boys."
It would be helpful to get beyond the competition over who has it worse, and just be opposed to any and all unfair discrimination. I think the problem are the proposed remedies. They're not opposition to discrimination, but further discrimination claiming to balance the game. Problem is, that requires a comprehensive balancing of all factors in the game, and not just opposition to particular agreed injustices.
Lots of dads get particularly wound up about their daughters sexuality. One of the uglier bits of life.
Being obligated to be a more or less normal boy is something that a lot of boys can manage. It's an abusive requirement when it's something a particular boy can't do or strongly dislikes doing.
A girl can't stop being a girl.
What westward is talking about is a girl being attacked for being a girl. What you're talking about (and it's a quite serious issue) is boys being attacked for not being good enough at being boys.
I'm not denying that there's gender-based abuse of boys. I even know a couple of men who grew up in families that strongly preferred girls.
It took me a lot of years to understand what "misogyny" meant, and I'm usually good at figuring out words from context. My problem with the word was that I'd grown up in a family which valued girls and boys about equally, and I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that there are a lot of people (mostly but not entirely male, I think) who hate women.
If I used the same metrics that are used to get the "XX% of women are domestically abused!!!!!" talking points, I myself would be a victim of domestic violence, but I am not.
Reasonable estimates of what percent of women who have been victims of what is normally thought of when the phrase "Domestic Violence" is used, stuff worth doing something about --not being pushed out the way once in your life--, is very small and not more than a few percentage points.
See
Johnson, M. (1995). "Patriarchal Terrorism and Common Couple Violence: Two Forms of Violence against Women". Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 57, No. 2 (May, 1995), pp. 283-294.
I’ve seen at least one LW woman use some men’s stupid analyses of creepiness as exclusion or dislike of low-status or unattractive persons.
I think you're referring to me. You're free to call the analysis stupid if you want, but it was my analysis and my experience, and when I look back the analysis still rings true to me. It was not men's analysis. It was mine.
I just want to say that as a man, I'm horrified by what submitters A & B observed/endured, and I hope they learn some day that most of us guys aren't like that. I was forward in an unintentionally creepy way (probably 1.5-2x as bad as the "attractive college dormmate" story) several years ago. I realized how awful my behavior was, apologized for it, still regret it, and haven't done anything like that since then.
I do attribute reading PUA stuff for my creepiness. Since then, my model has been refined, and I've seen plenty of empirical data...
I do attribute reading PUA stuff for my creepiness.
One of my friends, who actually studied so much PUA that he briefly became a coach, was very good at not being creepy. The way he did this was being clear about his intentions. Not necessarily explicit: he would still use innuendo etc. The point was, if he was into a woman, he would flirt with her a lot, assuming she was at all warm to the prospect. If not, he was still very friendly, but interacted in a markedly different way.
This meant that women don't have to guess about what he's up to. He recounted a story that took place in our university residence, involving another male friend of ours and a female friend they both knew. We'll call my PUA friend K, the woman F, and the other friend B. So, F was sitting in her room when K pushed her door ajar, saw her, and then went it and sat down on her bed, and said something to the effect of "Hey, what's up?"
F responded warmly, "Oh, man, the weirdest thing just happened... B just came into my room unannounced and started talking to me... it was kinda creepy..."
K paused, and asked with a grin, "You mean, just like I did, just now" and she reflected that yea...
I wonder whether it's relevant that K comes across as consciously knowing that he's interested, and thus capable of reasoning about what he wants (and how to get it ethically and within social bounds); whereas B is acting on instinct and without awareness, so may suddenly come out with a proposition (or a grope) out of nowhere. If you aren't reasoning about your goals in a social interaction, your goal-directed actions may be rather random and unpredictable, which is bad for your partner.
I just want to say that as a man, I'm horrified by what submitters A & B observed/endured, and I hope they learn some day that most of us guys aren't like that.
What evidence do you have that most men are in fact not like that? (Disclaimer: I am also male. Also, thanks for the porn and masturbation links. Seems worth looking more into.)
He didn't assert it, he presupposed it.
"I hope that one day you learn that p" doesn't mean "I hope that p is the case and one day you learn it". It presupposes p and asserts "I hope that one day you learn it".
Of the supporters of PUA I've read, they break down into two groups - single men and married women. (Married men don't seem to write about PUA, although given that married women do, presumably there are some who have picked up its ideas and simply don't add to the discussion.)
So apparently a lot of women appreciate being "Gamed" in long-term relationships as well, and appreciate the changes in attitude from guys who switch to it. No idea about the statistics. "Alpha attitudes" preclude jealousy, dependency, and insecurity, all attitu...
Yeah, if we could use these posts to learn about women's experiences instead of constantly doubting everything they say...that would be great.
Doubting that a person is honestly and accurately relating their experiences is one thing, doubting that the generalizations they draw are accurate is another. I upvoted the post, but I think V_V brings some legitimate considerations to the table here.
Women and men tend to have somewhat different experiences in life, and it's useful for them to be exposed to each others' experiences and learn from them. But I don't think we can assume that the generalizations any particular woman draws from her experiences will be accurate, any more than we can assume that the generalizations that a man draws will be accurate. We just take them all for the evidence they're worth.
Doubting that a person is honestly and accurately relating their experiences is one thing
And even that has it's place since people do in fact exaggerated their experience.
No, we take their experiences as fact.
It is not clear, though, why we must automatically take their interpretation of the policy relevance of their experiences as fact.
Well, no.
If someone says "Joe did bad things X, Y, and Z to me because he plays violent video games," we can take it as true that X, Y, and Z actually happened without thereby agreeing that video games have anything to do with it. Being unconvinced of the conclusion (or even rejecting it) does not license us to disregard the evidence of that person's experience.
See also Qiaochu_Yuan's comment here:
General note: let's not do that thing where we don't like an argument someone is presenting and so we fail to update on the evidence they present in favor of it.
Yeah, if we could use these posts to learn about women's experiences instead of constantly doubting everything these they say...that would be great.
I think that this would make women more willing to describe their experiences. I also think on LW learning and engagement often look like doubt and criticism, and that epistemic hygiene is very important.
Pascal's mugging alert!
False alert. That is not Pascal's Mugging.
The burden of providing evidence is on those who make positive claims.
Probability theory rejects your social rule. It will not play favorites for you for any reason.
I see no evidence for this claim.
Either you are using the word 'evidence' incorrectly or you haven't looked. Consider replacing 'no' with 'insufficient' in order to make your claim plausible.
I’ve seen at least one LW woman use some men’s stupid analyses of creepiness as exclusion or dislike of low-status or unattractive persons.
I think the general theory is that one is perceived as a creep based on a perceived threat. Often these are of physical or sexual assault, but they would also include threats to status caused by a low status male treating you as a potential mate or companion.
This seems consistent with your analysis on creepiness below. You predict his brain mistakenly perceiving you as having the status of a potential mate, which c...
I think the general theory is that one is perceived as a creep based on a perceived threat.
Speaking solely from my own experience and language usage, I think of creepiness as related to clinginess. A creep is a man who gives the impression of trying to insist on unwanted intimacy (there's some sort of emotional/physical intersection there) and of unwillingness to go away. I believe that "skin crawling" is a common metaphor for the experience of being around someone who is creepy.
I've actually been threatened a couple of times, and I went into a useful emotionally dissociated state. The men involved didn't strike me as creepy.
I'm not denying that there can be some status issues, but they don't offer a universal explanation. There are reports of women who find some high status men creepy, and not all low status men are creepy. If women keep saying "No, low status doesn't explain creepiness", then maybe it's incumbent to at least ask what else they think is going on.
I believe part of the problem is that a good many men don't seem to have had the experience of being creeped out, so they're guessing about possible patterns. Unfortunately, the low status model leaves out the possibility that one reason some men are reliably unattractive is that the men quickly give the impression of being bad emotional matches.
I don't get all the criticism of PUAs, submitter B mentions them but doesn't provide any elaborate arguments and I don't think it's fair to compare them to gay converters(gay converters want to change other people PUAs don't, on the contrary they accept woman exactly how they are). In effect PU is understanding how women work and adjusting your behavior to become attractive to them. Could you be more specific in what exactly is wrong with them?
If the sole determining factor of whether an interaction with a women is desirable is whether they end up attracted to you then, yes, even the most extreme sort of pick up artistry would be unproblematic.
However, if you think that there are other factors that determine whether such an interaction is desirable (such as whether the woman is treated with respect, is not made to feel unpleasant etc) then certain sorts of pick up artistry are extremely distasteful.
For example, let's hypothetically imagine that women are more attracted to people who make them feel insecure (I take no position on the accuracy of this claim). Sure, it would just be "understanding how women work and adjusting your behaviour to be more attractive to them" if you deliberately made them feel insecure. And sure, this would be no problem if being attractive was the sole determining factor of whether the interaction was desirable. However, if you think women deserve to be treated with respect and not made to feel horrible (presuming not because they are women but just because all humans deserve this) then this interaction is extremely undesirable.
Some discussions of pick up artistry don't just blur this line but fail to even realise there is a line. To those who think women should be treated with respect, this is extremely concerning.
In general a PUA should always make a woman feel good, otherwise why should she choose to stay with him?
Human mating interests are not aligned perfectly with the happiness goals of the gene carriers in question. (It so happens that creating mostly positive affect in interactions is usually optimal, but this isn't entirely consistent and certainly isn't an inevitable first principle.)
If you are a guy and have a button you can legally press that makes the woman you're trying to woo fall in love with you, pressing that button would be ... bad?
The "good - bad" scale is not the same as "legal - illegal" scale, although in nice societies they correlate positively.
Pressing people's buttons to make them act against their long-term interests is bad and legal.
(Where "bad" means approximately: "I wouldn't trust given person to cooperate with me in Prisonners' Dilemma, so I would consider it rational to defect".)
(Where "bad" means approximately: "I wouldn't trust given person to cooperate with me in Prisonners' Dilemma, so I would consider it rational to defect".)
Upvoted for this alone.
If you care about both parties being consenting adults, you'll dislike it if one party tries to undermine the clarity of the other person's consent.
If you are a car salesman and have a button you can legally press which makes your customer buy a car, you'd press it. Instrumental rationality, no?
If you are a researcher who has a button he can legally press to make that reviewer look upon his submission more favorably, you'd probably press it.
No and no. And I think less of those who answer in the affirmative.
PUAs don't, on the contrary they accept woman exactly how they are
The problem here is likely that the PUA presumptions concerning what women are like are offensive to some.
PUA stance - "I accept women how they are! Women are attracted to confident, dominant males. You've got to show that you are assertive- even if it means being an asshole and playing on people's insecurities sometimes."...etc
Analogy to racism - "I accept blacks how they are! I don't demand them to do intellectual tasks. I keep plenty of watermelon and fried chicken lying around the house, I do everything I can to make them feel welcome" ... etc
You see the issue here? The thing that offends here is not the fact that PUA's want to adjust behavior to attract women. The thing that offends is that the PUA's conception of what women are like is perceived by some as demeaning. Imagine how you would feel if someone made inaccurate assumptions about you via generalizations from some group you belong to?
I also want to say that even if PUA techniques are instrumentally successful at attracting women (I don't know if this is the case), it isn't necessarily because that the PUA worldview is epistemicall...
I also want to say that even if PUA techniques are instrumentally successful at attracting women (I don't know if this is the case), it isn't necessarily because that the PUA worldview is epistemically correct. I'm sure anyone who sets out with the explicit goal of attracting women will be more successful at the task than they were prior to setting up that goal.
I once attended a PUA seminar, motivated by pure curiosity and interest in psychology, and there was a lot of emphasis on reading women. The basic approach could be summed up as:
The techniques don't need to work on the average woman to be successful. The gauge her interest and move on quickly parts filter for those who respond well to them (I would guess also for undesirable personality traits).
PUAs don't, on the contrary they accept woman exactly how they are
Many anti-gay conservative Christians say the exact same thing. They have an entire rhetorical memeplex devoted to expressing how much God already loves each and every homosexual just as he created them.
gay converters want to change other people PUAs don't
What's wrong with wanting to change other people? Heck, this site's stated goal of "raising the sanity waterline" is going to involve changing people.
I agree, but Viliam_Bur raised that particular hypothetical, so I was curious as to his estimate of its likelihood.
ETA: note that "useful skills for establishing and maintaining long-term relationships" is presumably beside the point, though. That is, if "the Game" makes its practitioners more likely to never have a long-term relationship they will thereby also be made less likely to have a $200,000 divorce.
LW Women Submissions
a call for anonymous submissions by the women on LW
Seven women submitted
uh... could this be rephrased?
B: I'm not sure what one can draw from the porn-obsessed evangelical. So many things are going wrong all at once! His actions don't seem consistent with his apologetics, so I don't see how you draw that conclusion.
The idea of apologetics definitely exists in society. See the recent Steubenville rape case where a significant portion of people were arguing against it being rape, despite the lack of consent and her being too drunk to respond to anything.
But, you are right that this example doesn't show that. What would demonstrate this is that it is a common thing, not an example of someone who is clearly not neurotypical.
it doesn't follow that it's also teaches useful skills for establishing and maintaining long-term relationships
I'm under the impression that the book The Game itself explicitly laments that PUAs aren't good at that. (OTOH, there's no point in learning how to maintain a relationship if you don't even know how to establish one in the first place, so it can still be useful. Not to avoid divorce, though.)
[META] Why do LWers seem to get their collective panties in a bunch every time gender issues / women are mentioned?
Why do LWers seem to get their collective panties in a bunch every time gender issues / women are mentioned?
Your phrasing implies that people are overreacting and being ridiculous. A more neutral phrasing-- something like "Why are people so angry about gender issues?" or "Why do gender issues get so much attention?"-- probably would have gone over better.
What should I understand from the instant negative karma response?
You seemed to object in another comment to a response which "could've been an explanation, but in the end it turned out to be declaring sides." Well, your question reads like a straightforward declaration of sides. Hence the downvoting. NancyLebovitz is also correct.
I didn't downvote you.
However, if you've read some of the previous discussions on the subject-- the background is the idea that LW defaults to being a sufficiently uncomfortable place for women that women don't stay, and this is a problem.
As a result, asking why are people getting so worked up about the subject looks like saying that the default style at LW is satisfactory, and if women don't like it, that's not important enough to be worth dealing with.
never complain about karma, but ESPECIALLY never try to portray a few downvotes as the view of the forum.
And possibly a hefty amount of socially unacceptable false things too.
It could've been an explanation, but in the end it turned out to be declaring sides.
I think it's interesting how many "things you [supposedly] can't say" about society are actually very commonly said, throughout mainstream media, religious preaching, popular fiction and nonfiction.
There are some good ideas here - really there are - but this simply isn't good enough to be posted directly to Main. If this was a draft, I'd be encouraging and maybe suggest some revisions, but as it is this is exactly as good as you'd expect a first draft from a random sample of LWers to be.
EDIT: which is, of course, why it isn't actually in Main. Not sure how I hallucinated that. My objection is bunk. Upvoted, naturally.
The following section will be at the top of all posts in the LW Women series.
Several months ago, I put out a call for anonymous submissions by the women on LW, with the idea that I would compile them into some kind of post. There is a LOT of material, so I am breaking them down into more manageable-sized themed posts.
Seven women submitted, totaling about 18 pages.
Standard Disclaimer- Women have many different viewpoints, and just because I am acting as an intermediary to allow for anonymous communication does NOT mean that I agree with everything that will be posted in this series. (It would be rather impossible to, since there are some posts arguing opposite sides!)
To the submitters- If you would like to respond anonymously to a comment (for example if there is a comment questioning something in your post, and you want to clarify), you can PM your message and I will post it for you. If this happens a lot, I might create a LW_Women sockpuppet account for the submitters to share.
Please do NOT break anonymity, because it lowers the anonymity of the rest of the submitters.
[Note from daenerys- These two submissions might actually be one submission that had some sort of separation (such as a line of asteriks). If I processed them as separate when they were supposed to be a single entry, this is completely my mistake, and not at all the fault of the submitters. Sorry for the confusion.]
Here's a webpage with more on how misogyny works, including examples in the comments of "mansplaining" minimalizing problems.
Under the article, there's a comment about Stieg Larrson's book, originally named "Men who Hate Women." To see what motivated such a name, I Googled and found this article about his experiences and guilt. Guilt is something that many have felt and tried to assuage in various ways, including asking for forgiveness. I've come to the conclusion that we should never forgive, only demand solutions, so as not to suffer continual sinning and forgiving. With solutions comes absolution, so forgiveness is unnecessary but for allowing the guilty get away with crimes (like the rapists in the article).
The article about Larsson also has a bit about his partner's contributions not being credited to her, which seems to be typical of man-woman partnerships. Besides seeing it in other stories, I've experienced it in my own life. I gave my ex much input and feedback for his works, but others will never know. Meanwhile, he trivialized and hindered my work. He recently admitted to purposely discouraging me from going to college or doing well while I was there. I suspected as much, like when he guilt-tripped me the morning I had to cram for an AP exam in high school, BSing that my not celebrating his birthday with him meant that I didn't love him. This was when he was in grad school -- he knew what he was doing. He wanted to keep me for himself, and often said so. That thinking--a woman serving one men--was a justification for him to rape, physically assault, psychologically manipulate, and limit me (such as when or what I was allowed to write). Similar thinking exists in other persons' head, including in some women who blame themselves if their partners beat them, cheat on them, etc. But we can't happily serve one being; we absorb, process, and optimize much, much more than one being, who cannot be processed separate from the rest of the cosmos anyways. Forcing or planning a body to serve just one body (even one's own body) will involve abuse.
Due to how our bodies work, a person tends to not respect a partner who is focused on pleasing just that person. Some poor souls are caught in a vicious cycle of doting on their partners, who in turn, don't love them much or disrespect them and eventually leave, giving imprecise, useless explanations like "the person isn't intellectual enough," as can be seen here. "Someone who loves you" doesn't necessarily love You, but rather a narrow understanding of You. In other words, you don't love a person you don't know.
The men who abuse women and claim they love those women do not know those women, any more than my ex understood my work for the-world-as-I-know-it, which is quite different from the world-as-he-knows-it, a world where women are whores when, to me, many women are slaves to idiots who don't know what's good, like people who perceive rape as cool or fun. My ex wrote a song called, "Son of Whore," basically saying his mother and other mothers are whores, and also called me a whore, though he was the one forcing sex on me. On other occasions, he claimed I was the love of his life. You might think my ex was a sociopath, but no -- he's a normal male, working as a university professor. His thinking, like most humans', is outdated or out of touch with reality; his map misrepresents the territory. So now he has to deal with losing the love of his life, whom he neither really knew nor loved. Plus, he has to deal with my corrective writing to prevent him from harming another person. In that way, I'm still self-sacrificing to make him and his work better. How sub-optimal of me when I should be focusing on work helpful to more people.
.....
[note from daenerys- I think I somehow lost the links in this one. Very sorry!]
“Note that with a lot of the above issues, one of the biggest problems in figuring out what is going on isn't purposeful misogyny or anything.”
Those LWers who define rationality as for “winning” can play self-serving games. I'd like to think there's no such thing as purposeful misogyny, but PUA literature (in addition to other things my body has absorbed in my life) has left no room for that naïveté. To be clear, by "misogyny" I don't mean “hatred of women,” which is a useless definition except for denying it exists. Some PUAs point out they "love" women, like some anti-gays point out they love gays and that's why they're trying to prevent gays from committing sins and thereby damning themselves and/or invoking God's wrath towards society. Similarly, PUAs and MRAs can believe themselves to be saving the world from irrational women. They have fallacious utility-maximization rationalizations, like someone I personally know who justified molestation of his biological daughter, with explanations from "she likes it" to [paraphrasing] “it’ll hasten the child's puberty changes and increase her bust size to make her more attractive to potential male mates.” Other family members, including the victim’s biological mother (abuser’s wife) and paternal grandmother accepted the abuser's rationalizations, and hence did not intervene. The molestation escalated into raping the child, which the family members excused. I’ve seen similar stories in the news, where a naïve consumer of such news might be at a loss for why persons close to the abuser didn’t intervene (e.g. Sandusky’s wife).
So, “misogyny,” to have a definition that points to real phenomena, can be said to be apologetics of abusing females, with messages (not just in natural language) or actions anywhere from seemingly benign and rational to full out demeaning or violent. And many females' brains accept and internalize such messages and actions, hence excusing the abusers, blaming the victims, forgiving abuses rather than taking actions to prevent them, or even letting themselves be abused (under some notion that the dynamics are unchangeable). In this news piece on a school spanking and in its comment field, you can see examples of people rationalizing hitting kids and/or letting themselves be hit, even though, as one commenter pointed out, we don’t use corporal punishment on prisoners.
My grandmother used to beat my younger brother to vent her frustrations with the world, including having to serve everyone while my grandfather stayed on the couch in front of the TV all day because he wouldn’t do “women’s work” and he was retired from “men’s work.” Her brain rationalized the beating as necessary for disciplining my brother, even though the only “disciplining” effects were to force my brother to finish eating what she served him. She has come to regret what she did, but I’m not sure she’s aware of the dynamics behind what happened, including the patriarchal inequity and her brain’s imprecise narrative about making my brother well-behaved.
In case you don’t have much history with abuse, perhaps the phenomena I’m discussing will be more concrete to you if you’ve had experiences dealing with men’s porn and meditate on those experiences. This article, “Being Porn,” refers to women internalizing and enacting men’s porn views, rather than trying to enlighten men so they make better use of resources and don’t become or stay addicted to porn. To be fair, though, it’s difficult to enlighten others if one is not good at brain-hacking herself. For example: On the HLN channel, there was a criminal investigations episode on an Evangelical Christian ex-military man who, addicted to porn, used varying excuses like ‘it’s research to save our sex life and marriage’ whenever she tried to get him to stop. Fed up, she asked for divorce, and instead of going through the pains of divorce, he murdered her and their daughter (age 6) in their sleep, put their bodies in the dumpster at his workplace and pretended they went missing. Cases like that illustrate how apologetics can get out of control (talk about affective death spirals), with a person operating on wrong confabulations upon wrong assumptions, while other not very enlightened persons (like the wife and the Evangelical church she tried to get help from) cannot effectively enlighten the outta control person.
Given that brains perform apologetics, how rational can we be in cultures based more on some men’s analyses than on others’ analyses, esp. when others’ analyses parrot so much of those men’s—in cultures like LW’s? There’s potential for your female narratives project to change LW’s stupid (read: “low-effort thought”) analyses, if the women don’t end up affirming what the men have already said. I’ve seen at least one LW woman use some men’s stupid analyses of creepiness as exclusion or dislike of low-status or unattractive persons. Such over-simplified analysis doesn’t account for what I know, which includes not being creeped out when an unattractive guy touches me in a platonic manner and being a little creeped out when an attractive college dormmate poked me on Facebook and then just stared at me for a long time at a social function—even my gay guy friend indentified that behavior as creepy. (The behavior could’ve been called “rapey eyes” if the guy wasn’t shy but rather objectifying me, like I’ve seen some men do. I give them back the evil eyes to remind them to do no evil, and they turn away in shame. I first learned of the evil-eyes’ effectiveness when I got angry at bullying of my brother when I was first grade.
The evil-eyes was just part of the indignation expression, and uses of it made bullies stop in their tracks. This reminds me of an angry-looking deity in some East Asian cultures, icons of which are customarily put in places of business. I used to wonder why, but now I see it may be to remind people to do no evil.) Back to the dormmate…I decided against getting involved with him, as I already had a bf and a lot of stressful things to deal with, and the dormmate (with his possible obsessive desire and my body’s possible compliance despite my better judgment) would complicate things.
My creepy/danger alert was much higher at a meeting with a high-status (read: supposedly utility-generating, which includes attractive in the sense of pleasing or exciting to look at, but mostly the utility is supposed to be from actions, like work or play) man who was supposed to be my boss for an internship. The way he talked about the previous intern, a female, the sleazy way he looked while reminiscing and then had to smoke a cigarette, while in a meeting with me, my father (an employer who was abusive), and the internship program director, plus the fact that when I was walking towards the meeting room, the employees of the company, all men, stared at me and remarked, “It’s a girl,” well, I became so creeped out that I didn’t want to go back. It was hard, as a less articulate 16 year-old, to explain to the internship director all that stuff without sounding irrational. But not being able to explain my brain’s priors (including abuses that it had previously been too naïve/ignorant to warn against and prevent) wasn’t going to change them or decrease the avoidance-inducing fear and anxiety. So after some awkward attempts to answer the internship director’s question of why I didn’t want to work there, I asked for a placement with a different company, which she couldn’t do, unfortunately.
Given all my data, I can say approximately that identification of creepiness is a brain making predictions about someone’s brain (could even be one’s own brain, being introspective about whether you’re being creepy) running on a stupid/unenlightened/unwise apologetic program that could possibly escalate into actions unpleasant or of low utility to the target and/or to him/her/one’s self (e.g. energy-wasting, abuse, heartbreak, etc.). This analysis is backed up by data from studies I link to in this comment.
Back to LWers’ analyses. Tony Robbins said on an episode of Oprah’s LifeClass that women tend to be too affirming, rather than challenging like men. While I’d like to think that’s not true, since my body’s tendency for as far back as I can remember has been to challenge wrong or unnecessary confabulations (I have to remind my body to be positively reinforcing of good actions), Robbins was talking about the same kind of phenomenon I’m writing about here, which in effect, amounts to women not doing more to move people to become less wrong. Unlike Robbins, though I’d say that this is in part due to women using men’s explanations, with men being less challenging than apologetic. I regularly have to counter BS from men in my life or online. The Chinese equivalent of “bullshit” translated into English is bull fart. Not that females don’t make info-poor, self-serving abstractions in public language.